Let's keep the debate rational and objective, I generally have a great deal of respects for your posts but we don't need the description above. Of course I love my family and I want them protected.
But.
This lockdown is stupid.
It is a blunt tool that is causing untold and immeasurable damage that may be felt for generations to come if we don't come to our senses soon.
A few facts: The average age of those who have dies across the UK and Europe are 80 years old. And while no one wants to see a loved one die under any circumstances, the vast majority of these patients have died with at least three other known pre-existing morbidities. The cases (and there are some) of youngsters dying are a rare anomaly. We are witnessing a pandemic which has close to influenza levels of mortality.
Now why is the lockdown stupid? Because 57% of deaths (in europe - but probably the same in the UK) have been in care homes. We know that those of retirement age and above are the most at risk. Therefore we should have put much much more effort into protecting those people. If we only spent 10% of what the government has thrown at this in terms of furloughing people into creating super safe environments for the elderly, then we would have had less deaths.
And we would have enabled the working age population and the SMEs to continue to function and stay economically healthy. Watch divorce rates explode after lockdown is over. Watch businesses collapse. Watch the suicide rate increase. Watch mental health issues multiply.
The risks need weighing up rationally and pragmatically, with care and compassion for both those at risk from the disease and to those at risk from the effects of continuing lockdown.
I believe the first three weeks was sensible and it came two weeks too late. And then, during those three weeks our efforts should have been put into safeguarding the vulnerable, increasing the resources of the NHS and then letting the working age population get back to their lives, but following advice to mitigate the potential for infection.
Instead we have a frightened and confused population, stressed and heading for mass unemployment and poverty. I love my parents and I love my children. I want my parents to live as long as possible and as healthily as possible. But I am not willing to damage my children's future for that.
Let's not lose sight of all the other effects this is having.
You tell me to keep the debate rational and objective, but you don't want to hear just how people die from Covid?
Sorry, but that's the way it is. It's bad enough that you have to be sedated to go onto a ventilator, where you know you have a 50% chance of ever waking up again, but if you weren't able to be treated in hospital you would literally suffocate or die of organ failure. OK then, got that out of the way.
Like
everyone else who posts here saying Lockdown is too harsh,
you never acknowledge just how many MORE people would become infected if it were looser. We'll probably have say, 50,000 deaths even with a full Lockdown. With non-vulnerables carrying on working (that's probably 60% of the population?), however careful the majority were, even if the usual 10% of people who fuck it up for everyone else did their usual suff, taking risks, doing things they shouldn't, that could easily become 250,000 deaths. Assuming roughly the same proportion of those would be old, as are dying now, roughly the same proportion of deaths would be younger, ie five times as many now. And as for that sheer number, you don't think that level of infection wouldn't wreck the NHS? And the inevitable corollary of that would be many, many more of the Emergency Services falling ill too?
The sheer number of extra infections would bring the country to its knees in any case, with all the ill people, even if they didn't die, being unable to work for weeks on end.
I can't be sure. Can you?
Some scientists are saying the Lockdown could be less, it'd probably be OK. They can't be totally sure of course. So would you be willing to risk the nightmate scenario?
Like I say, 50,000 deaths with a full Lockdown, how many with a lesser Lockdown. Do you feel lucky?
Economic indicators are that although the depression caused by all this has been devastatingly quick and deep, because there were no underlying economic causes, recovery should be swift. I'm not stupid enough to think the collateral damage won't be truly horrible, to the economy and to people's mental health, but this whole situation is a balancing act, weighing one horrible consequence against another. There is no win here, it will be shit.
